(Proper blog post in a few hours, but I thought this needed saying)

I’ve seen several people sharing a story about the “Em Drive” being the subject of a peer-reviewed paper coming out soon.

Just a couple of points — firstly, that story doesn’t say what the actual paper says, and secondly, not every paper that passes peer review actually has a useful scientific result in it (many — possibly most, depending on the discipline — don’t).

All it means is that the people asked to review it have seen no obvious flaws in experimental design, not that whatever the experiment reported is (which, again, we don’t even know) has produced an actual, replicable, result.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and violation of conservation of momentum is as extraordinary a claim as they get. I would be *more* likely to believe that someone had invented a time machine, say, than a reactionless drive — *MUCH* more likely, because we know of at least a couple of ways such a machine could exist without violating every single law of physics.

I would be prepared to stake literally *everything* — my house, my savings, my marriage, my life, the lives of my friends and family — on the em-drive not ever working, because it’s *that* ludicrous an idea, and there’s that little evidence for it.

Don’t believe the hype.